


Doom Upon All the World - a Dragon Age: Inquisition Novelette

by RickyAlvarez



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RickyAlvarez/pseuds/RickyAlvarez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doom Upon All the World is an unofficial 14,000 word alternate ending to Dragon Age: Inquisition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doom Upon All the World - a Dragon Age: Inquisition Novelette

If you want better formatting, [you can read this novelette on Google Docs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u45-7HZnFQxqHwgYPObdA0sdHNhMpW6eAlZTJCpUKFo/pub).  Enjoy and let me know what you think! - Rick

 

 _conceived & written by _ [ _ Ricky Alvarez _ ](mailto:rickaveris@gmail.com)

_edited by_ [ _ A.R. Herring _ ](mailto:oneirophobe@gmail.com)

“400, do I hear 400?”

“400!” shouts the hopping Orlesian noble at the front of the Aeducan Auction House.  The dwarven auctioneer can barely see her, but he can certainly see the cluster of overdressed women—likely her friends or sisters—that have surrounded her, each with a fancy fan in hand, trying desperately to fend off Orzammar's heat.

“410!” sputters a fat dwarf in the back.  His old Proving Grounds armor is groaning, trying to hold itself together against a decade of weight gain, and his to-the-floor beard is full of crumbs.  The gaggle of Orlesians look at the has-been with disgust.  “No— _500!_ ”

The auctioneer swoops across the stage, past the gleaming prize of this bid war.  “We got 500, do I hear 600?!”

A dwarf with tattoos all over his face—Carta crime syndicate for sure, which means enough coin to get through the doors—raises his gloved hand and says, “700.”

“ **1000**  gold pieces,” the Orlesian noblewoman announces with pride.

The fat dwarf chokes on a biscuit.

“Do I hear 1100?” the auctioneer asks the hushed but grumbling room.  “Going once, going twice!  And  **sold**  to Mistress d'Relle of Val Falaise!”

A dwarf built like a druffalo walks out onto the stage and grabs one end of the Golden Nug.  He props the gigantic statue over his shoulder (much to the room's amazement) and heads out to d'Relle's carriage, which he knows rather intimately at this point, considering she and her entourage have bought out every auction today.   _Orlesians_.

More helper dwarves roll a cloth-cloaked pedestal to the center of the stage.  The auctioneer strokes the crimson velveteen and says, “And now, the final auction of the day.  I present to you...”

The auctioneer yanks the cloth off of the glass case, revealing what looks to be a palm-sized copper sphere within.  The audience bursts into whispers amongst themselves, unsure what to make of the strange, underwhelming object.

“This Orb,” the auctioneer explains, “was recently found nestled in the ruins of Thaig Ortan.  Could it be the top of a staff wielded by the only dwarven mage ever to live?”  The audience gasps!  “Could the Orb have been crafted by Caridin himself?  —Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, it is a scrying Orb.  Perhaps, in the hands of the right wielder, it could reveal the very future of Orzammar itself.”

“Pretty sure that's a trebuchet counterweight,” a dwarf suggests, which instantly scatters the leering crowd.  Tens of disappointed attendees storm out of the auction house.

“What a  _sham!_   House Harrowmont will hear of this!” one dwarf shouts on his way out.

The auctioneer, though flustered, tries to get the auction going.  “For the  _Orb of Mystery_ , bidding begins at 100 gold.”

Mistress d'Relle shrugs and raises her jeweled bidding paddle.  Counterweight or no, the Orb would make a beautiful table centerpiece for the upcoming Winter Palace ball.

“And we have 100!” the auctioneer says with a nod to d'Relle.  “Do I hear two hundr—”

“500,” the Carta dwarf says.

The auctioneer hesitates, but says, “500!  500 for the Orb of Mystery!  Do I hear 600?”  He glances at the group of Orlesians, who seem to be discussing amongst themselves.  “500 for the Orb of Mystery, going once, going—”

“700,” d'Relle says with a smile.  One of her disapproving sisters slaps her on the arm.

“And we have  _700_  for the—”

The Carta dwarf says, “I'll double that.  —1,400 gold.”

“ _What?_ ” the auctioneer asks in confusion.  “Oh, I mean—of  _course!_   1,400 gold!  Do I hear 1,500 for this priceless, one-of-a-kind artifact?!”

Mistress d'Relle's eyes gleam.

–

“Well?” the shadowed human asks.  They stand in one of the few nooks of Orzammar not lit by firefalls, though the stench of slag and the echoes of iron crashing against forges reach them even here.

“They, uh...”  The Carta dwarf slips his hands into his vest's pockets and leans up against the marble wall.  He stares out at the ant-sized silhouettes marching across the bridge to the Proving Grounds.  Without looking at Cavernicus, his employer, he says, “They kinda outbid me.”

The shadows creep off of Cavernicus' suit and face as he steps out of the alley.  “Did I not give you enough gold?” he asks the dwarf.

“The bitch bid 2,000.”

“ _ **What?**_   For a useless trinket?  What about your friend?  I paid him to stir  _unrest_.  Did he not stir unrest??”

“Yeah, I think that Orlesian saw right through Brick's  _trebuchet counterweight_  story,” the dwarf says.

“Brick?  His name is  _Brick?_ ”

“Here,” the dwarf says, offering the unused sackful of coins to him.  “Your gold.”

“No.  Keep it.  It is your payment,” Cavernicus says.

The shadows almost hide the dwarf's suspicious glare.  He's just noticed the pin Cavernicus wears on his chest.  Two serpents entangled.  —Tevinter.

“Payment for what?”

The Carta dwarf shivers under the weight of pelting rain, blood, and his own sweat.  He drops the knife into the grass and finds it funny that the storm's thunder can still startle him even after what he's done.  He steps over the bodies of four Orlesian girls, their pastel dresses now stained red.  Mistress d'Relle is among them.  The dwarf's  _other_  dagger is sticking out of her throat.

He cuts the ropes.  The horses, freed from the upturned carriage, sprint into the Ferelden wilderness.  He carefully steps around the shattered pieces of the flask that made short work of the Orlesians' guards.  They lie in the mud now, their faces eaten away by acid.

The dwarf climbs into the carriage, reaches past the Golden Nug, and—and the Orb grabs  **him**.  He pulls it out of the wreckage and

Solas turns the Orb over.  He sighs heavily, more frustrated by the hour, and then gestures to the torch on the wall.  It ignites with a brighter flame, further illuminating the cozy apothecary, but doing little to aid Solas' understanding of the Orb.

“Oh—I'm sorry!”  The chambermaid—an elf, just like Solas—backs into the doorway.  “I didn't realize you were still awake, Solas.  I'll do this room later.”

“Cinth?”  He sets the Orb down in its holder.  “It's quite all right.  The Master will be...  _displeased_ , should I not make any progress tonight.  Please, come in.”

“Aye.  He'll be just as displeased if I don't get this wing done before week's end,” Cinth says with a smile.  She drags her mop, bucket, and other cleaning supplies into the room.  “So how's that thing going?”

“ _Thing?_   It is a marvel, Cinth.  It is most definitely elvhen in origin.  I suspect it could be older than  _Tevinter itself_.”

Cinth looks up from her scrubbing to say, “Maker, don't let the Archon hear you say that.”

“I doubt I'll be meeting the Archon any time soon.”

“Hey, the Champion of Kirkwall started off in worse places, Sol.”

Cinth is treated to one of Solas' rare laughs.  He puts his work aside—another rarity—and leans over his chair's backrest towards her.  “The ‘ _Champion_ ’ blew up a chantry.  —Careful what you read, Cinth.  The Master would not appreciate you delving into Marcher propaganda.”

Cinth can't stop grinning.  “I'm getting out of here one of these days,” she says quietly.  “If I can't work my way up—hell, I'll go join the Dalish.  Run around naked in the forest.”

“I suspect you would enjoy that greatly.”

Two weeks later, in the jungles of the Donarks, so close to the ocean that Solas smells more sea salt than blood, Cinth is dead.

The others ran out of blood.  They are of no use to Cavernicus now.

“What are you  **doing** , Solas?” Cavernicus snaps.  “Hurry up, damn it, before it seeps into the earth!”

One of Cavernicus' knights crosses the glade to deliver a gauntleted backhand to Solas' face.  “On with it, elf!”

“I'm—”  Solas tries not to vomit.  “I'm sorry, Master,” he says, tasting his own tears when they reach his lips.  His face burns where the knight struck him.  “At once, Master.”

Solas' legs shudder with each step he takes around the elf slave corpses that litter the grass.  They're not normal corpses, either—they're exceptionally pale and opaque, all color drained from their warped and dry skin.  They look like mummies pulled right out of Nevarran crypts, and yet Solas can still hear their screams echoing through the trees.  Cavernicus' knights slaughtered them minutes ago, but every minute since has felt like an eternity.

“You should have joined the Dalish,” Solas says under his quivering breath—or maybe he just thought it.  He can't tell anymore.  He looms over Cinth's splayed body.  There's only one reason he wasn't sacrificed as well: He is a mage.

Solas raises his hands.  He's glad that tears have blurred his vision.  He doesn't want to see what he's about to do.

Solas draws the blood from Cinth's mouth and eyes.  A river of it emerges from what was once her chest, into the air, spiraling into runic patterns outlawed even in Tevinter.

“Yes, good!” Cavernicus exclaims.  The Orb trembles in his right hand's excited grasp.  His left hand is gently pressed against the moss-covered surface of an Eluvian.  The mirror towers above him, its top disappearing into the jungle's canopy.  Its sheen can only be described as...  _hungry_.  “Now funnel it into the Orb!”

Solas' struggle to control the blood magic is so great that he almost  **suffocates**.  He suddenly gasps for air, only now remembering that his body also exists outside of the Fade and needs to breathe to live.

The bloody pattern sparks with unstable power and comes crashing down onto the Orb.  Cinth's red hot life trickles through Cavernicus' fingers.

The Orb glows green.  It hums.  The Eluvian sings—or maybe that's just the suddenly-furious wind rattling the mirror.

Cavernicus is laughing hysterically.  “It worked!” he shouts.  “Do you see it?!”  He holds the Orb out to his knights, casting the sickly green light onto their armor.

“What happens now?” one of the knights asks warily.

Cavernicus turns away from them, to the mirror.  He holds the Orb high.  “ **Maker** , I call out to you!  I am Magister Cavernicus, my hands  _unsoiled!_   I alone hold the purity required to traverse the Golden City!  I stand before the Pearly Gates, before this  _Eluvian_ , and I beckon you!  Guide me forth, into your arms, and to the restoration of the  _ **Imperium!**_ ”

The rays of green light gently stroke Cavernicus' face.

“Guide me forth, Dear Maker!  By the fires of Andraste, guide me!”

The saliva on Solas' defeated frown gleams green.

“By the fires of  _ **Andraste**_ , by the regret of Maferath, by the Will of the Black Div—”

The Eluvian  **shatters**.  A wolf that's half the size of a dragon bites Cavernicus' entire arm off.  The Orb flashes and pulses and plummets to the quaking ground.  The knights scream and dive out of the way, and those that don't get crushed by the growling wolf's sprint.

Cavernicus turns and turns—it's all happening so fast.  He sees his mutilated arm on the ground.  He realizes that he's been  **impaled**  by multiple shards of the Eluvian.  He looks up just in time for the impossibly large wolf to rip the majority of his face off with its fangs.

Solas stands there in shock.  It's possible that he's made eye contact with Cavernicus, but it's hard to tell: The magister's scalp and eyes appear to be hanging from his chin.  A slushy wail escapes the hole in Cavernicus's head—and then a howl comes from behind Solas.

Solas stumbles out of the way just in time to avoid getting demolished by the wolf.  He watches the Fade-blurred beast charge at another group of knights and hears their spines and necks snapping in the clash.

Solas runs.  He gets snagged on a tangle of tree roots and falls.  He looks over his shoulder.  The wolf—the colossus—is chasing him.  He's next.  He feels a dread worse than death, and then the monster overwhelms him.

—

He wakes up because someone just kicked him in the head.

“Hey, elf, the fuck are you doing out in the street?”

Solas sits up on Tevinter cobblestone.  He looks at the watchman.  He clutches his own shirt and grows nauseated at its texture.  These aren't his clothes.

“What are you, deaf?” the watchman asks.

“Sorry,” Solas responds immediately this time.  He begins to get up.  “I'm just

Suddenly Solas is in an alley on the other side of Minrathous.  He's clutching the Orb, but it is dim.  He stares at it for too long—for so long that he no longer doubts his insanity.  He  _is_  crazy.

He will begin his new life as an insane, soon-to-be-imprisoned elf by asking an inanimate object questions.

“Are you... alive?” he asks of the Orb.

And that's when it hits him: It's not in the Orb.  It's in his  **body**.  The elvhen whispers swell inside of his head until they coalesce into a static scream.  He can understand none of it.  He can understand all of it.

 _I_   _ **could**_   _be._

—

One dark and stormy night will not keep Solas from traversing the dilapidated streets of Minrathous.  Wrapped in an unstained white silk robe, cocooned by a Barrier spell keeping him completely dry, he knocks on a door.

The stone-and-stained-glass door opens with a creak.  Taking up the full width of the entrance is a ten foot golem who looks like she  _just can't right now_.  The golem's beady eyes swirl with blue magic.  She stares Solas down with a degree of non-interest that only a construction of stone could have.

“I am here to see Corypheus,” Solas says.

The golem chews audibly, rock scratching rock.  It stomps into the belly of the tower, expecting Solas to follow—and he does.  They ascend a ridiculously long stairwell, to the very top of the tower, where magisters typically dwell.

The golem stops at the end of the stair and gestures into the foyer.

“Thank you,” Solas says.  He walks into the hall.

Once Solas is out of earshot, the golem breathes a sigh of relief.  It's not often that she manages to successfully escort elves into the tower  _without_  murdering them via smashing.  The golem lights up a cigarette.

“Magister Corypheus, I understand that you—”

“Did you bring the somnoborium?” Corypheus asks.

The Magister is an old man, as most are.  Plaques hang on every wall of his office—a lifetime of service to the Imperium.  Corypheus rises from his chair, still turned away from Solas, absorbed by his work much like Cavernicus used to be.

“Yes,” Solas says.  He pulls a satchel out of his robe.  “Here it is.”

Corypheus turns around.  His hair is jet black.  His beard and mustache are shaped sharply, as any politician's would be.  But it's Corypheus' eyes that Solas can't stop looking at: They're tinted red, like the man hasn't slept in a thousand years.

_That's because he hasn't._

Solas stiffens.

_And that's not his body._

“The  _Orb?_ ” Corypheus asks, his tone typical—as if he has better things to do than consort with an elf.

Solas pulls it out of the satchel.

Corypheus takes one look at it— **only**  one.  He walks away, past a cabinet of glittering staves.  He strokes a tidy magical altar, eight pieces of uniform red lyrium atop it, all in a row.  He peers through the window at what was once the most powerful nation in all of Thedas.

“Where did you find it?” Corypheus asks solemnly.

“I'd... —an auction in Orzammar, I am told.”

The Magister chuckles.  “An  _auction_.”  He presses his clutched hand against his mouth.  He feels his nails against his lips.  “And why seek  _me_  out?  I am a simple magister, Elf, not an  _antique_  collector.”

“I was told you'd be able to help me.  That you could...”  Solas pauses when he sees Corypheus turn back around to face him, but then resumes.  “...  _unlock_  it.”

“Told by  **whom?** ”

Solas doesn't answer—and with a satisfied smirk, Corypheus approaches his desk.  He files away most of the parchment atop it.  Suddenly, his political career is the last of his concerns.

“I understand your need for  _anonymity_ , child,” Corypheus says, casually gesturing at Solas' dramatic cloak and cowl.  “Perhaps, long ago, that object brimmed with power.  But that power is lost to time.  I know not why you seek to awaken the somnoborium, but...”  He dips a quill into ink.  “Are you willing to pay the price to do so?”

“And of what price do you speak, Magister?”

Corypheus laughs.

“ **Blood.** ”

\--

“Ugh!  My people  _said_ you'd be making the talk-to-everyone-because-I'm-lonely-or-something rounds.”

“Nice to see you too, Sera,” the Inquisitor says as he takes a seat at the bar.  He knocks on the countertop.  The barkeep already knows what he likes.  “Just to be clear, I think it's important to socialize with the troops, especially after...  —Well, the genocide of ancient elves and jumping through mirrors is pretty jarring.  For me, anyway.”

“Max—don't mind if I call you Max, right?” Sera asks.

“Actually, I kind of do.  I'm supposed to be the Inquisitor and—”

“Right, so Max.”  Sera downs the last of her pint.  “I've kinda given up on understanding any of this shite the moment that Tevinter Emporium guy put me in the gaol and overran the effin' continent with a demon army—or maybe he didn't.”

“Wait, 'gaol'?  Did you just use that word?  'Gaol'?”

“Listen to me, you.  What I'm saying is... I don't right care what happens to me.  If you're tryin'a keep me from going crazy, that went out the window years ago, and it had more to do with that time I got lost at the theater at Val Royeaux and had to listen to  _Wilkshire Downs_  for five hours straight 'til I was sober enough to read than any of the demon Maker time rift Coryphalon shite we been dealin' with.”

“Sera, how long have you been here?” Maxwell asks.

“Shit, she was here before me,” Iron Bull says while leaning in to steal the Inquisitor's pint.  The horned bastard is gone before Max thinks to say anything.

“Listen,” Sera demands.  “You listening?”

“Yes.   _ **Yes!**_   I have been listening!  I have been listening and I am very concerned!” Max exclaims, blanketing the tavern in silence and drawing many curious gazes their way.

 “If something were to happen to me to take me out of service...  Service to you and other  _entities.._.  It might be to our mutual benefit for you to  _seek out the reds_.”

“What?”

“If Coryphagorn murders me, or if one'a them Rage Demons burns me from the inside out, or if I trip over a rock an' hit my head and become a vegetable, I think I'd trust you to  _trim the virgin's saffron._ ”

“Sera.” Max lowers his voice to a whisper.  “Are you trying to get me to kill another noble for you? — _ **OW!**_ ”

“That's right, I punched you with my punchin' arm.  Forget it.  Not the brightest Inquisitor in the history books, are you?”

“I'm in books?”

“Inquisitor!” an out-of-breath soldier yells from the entrance, bringing all of the tavern's conversations to a halt.  “A message—err, a messenger.”  He shakes his head.  “Just come to the throne room, Inquisitor Sir!”

“Oh shite,” Sera says after the soldier leaves in a hurry.  “What's it gonna be this time, an effin' Qunari invasion?”

“Don't look at  _me_ ,” Iron Bull says from across the room.

“Fantasies falling, fragmenting, flamboyant, flaming in a furnace,” Cole whispers while burying some Prophet's Laurel seeds in the garden.  He looks up to watch the Inquisitor jog into the throne room.  “Gone.  Only hate now.”

 

Max bursts through the throne room doors.  “What's going on?”

Cassandra joins him immediately.  She says, “A Red  _Templar_.  He walked  **right**  up to the gates, a scroll in his hand.  Demanded a message delivered—to  _you_.”

“Corypheus  _negotiating_  with us now?” Max asks during his and Cassandra's stride down the hall to the throne.  “Terms of surrender, maybe?”

“We can only hope,” Cassandra says.  She gestures past the knights who hold the Red Templar in chains, to Leliana by the throne.

Max takes the scroll of parchment from Leliana.  “Is this it?” he asks.  “What does it say?”

Behind that bard's veneer, Leliana looks unnerved.  “You should read it for yourself,” she says, her arms crossed and her weight shifting from leg to leg.

The Inquisitor opens the scroll and reads it aloud to the assembled court:

_You've felled the Mages_

_the Templars too_

_the Demons now no threat to you_

_But what of what_

_You have not felled?_

_These ones, much closer than the Veil_

“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” Max says, which earns him disapproving looks from Leliana and Cassandra.  They say he has to act  _more professional_  now that he's Inquisitor.

“What, is Corypheus writing poetry now?” Max asks the Red Templar.  “Explain yourself!”

The Red Templar—just some teenager who fell in with just about the worst crowd ever—looks up at the Inquisitor.  And then he  **explodes**.  Gasps fill the hall as red lyrium bursts out of the boy's face and shatters.  Red gems, beautiful and glistening and deadly, trickle out of his armor.

“Maker,” Leliana whispers in horror.

“The ultimate fate of those infused with red lyrium, I'm afraid,” Vivienne comments from the front of the crowd.

“Get  **back!** ” Cassandra shouts once she awakens from the shock.  She puts herself between the crowd and the lyrium.  “Stay away from it!  Vivienne, get it out of here,  _ **now!**_ ”

“It's a shame,” Vivienne says, admiring the stained glass windows behind the throne.  “ _Andraste Rises from the Ashes_ —I love this particular piece.”

Vivienne raises her hand as if she's beckoning an elf server.  A flurry of wind and ice spirals down her arm, shoots across the floor, and gathers up the red lyrium pieces that were once a human being.  The frosted lyrium tornado then crashes through Andraste's stained glass head.  Vivienne doesn't let everyone's offended shouting break her concentration; she needs to carry the red lyrium as far from Skyhold as she can.

“I  **just**  put that up, Vivienne!” Max shouts.

“What is  _wrong_  with you people?” Skyhold's dwarven contractor asks when he walks in and sees the shattered window.  “Whatever; it's your gold, not mine.”

“The cold never bothered me anyway,” Vivienne says with a smirk.

Dorian is the only one who laughs.

–

“What do you think it  _means_ , Inquisitor?” Cullen asks.

Max grips the edge of the War Table.  He leans into it, eying their mess of military plans.  “I don't know,” he says.

“It  _means_  he's given up,” Morrigan suggests upon emerging from the shadows.

“Oh, there you are.”  Quietly, Josephine adds, “To no one's surprise.”

Morrigan smiles at Josephine and her little candle.  She says, “We have defeated Corypheus at every turn, Inquisitor.  He has nothing left—naught but games.  This  _haiku_  is nothing more than a pathetic intimidation tactic.”

“It's not a haiku, actually,” Cullen interjects.  “It's a...”  He sees the way they're looking at him.  “Never mind.”

“For once, I agree,” Leliana says to Morrigan.  “Corypheus intends to undermine our accomplishments—to imply that we do not have the advantage.  It would be wisest to ignore this distraction.”

“We strike now,” Cullen says with a knock on the War Table, and all nod in agreement.  “All that remains is to find Corypheus before he comes to us.”

“We've been looking for his base since all this began with no success,” Leliana says.

Cullen shakes his head and says, “His dragon must come and go from  _somewhere_.”

“Oh, what about the Deep Roads?” Josephine suggests.  “We could send word to Orzammar, hire envoys to determine if there has been any unusual sightings recently.”

The Inquisitor nods.  “We start there.  Cullen, send a significant presence to Orzammar.  Judging by what we've encountered so far, if Corypheus  _is_  in the Deep Roads, he will not hesitate to enslave all of Orzammar if given the chance.”

“ _Maker_ , I hope Red Dwarves aren't a thing,” Cullen mutters.

“Leliana, the Deep Roads don't begin and end in Orzammar.  Send your birds to every corner of Thedas.  I want every high dragon sighting investigated by our scouts.”

“As you wish,” Leliana says.

“Josephine, continue our talks with Denerim.  I know Celene shits herself every time a fucking mabari gets too close to the border, but we could really use Ferelden's help with all this.  Plus, Alistair's hot.”

Josephine hesitates, but her quill eventually meets her clipboard.  “Right.  —At once, Inquisitor.”

“Morrigan, continue to be mysterious and witch-y.”  Max  **eyes**  Leliana, silently hoping that she still has spies watching Morrigan 24/7.

Morrigan rolls her eyes and says, “And, to no one's surprise, even after the abolition of apostasy itself, the mage continues to bear the burden of the War Council's  _inner frustrations_.”

“Morrigan, you had the  _Archdemon's baby,”_  the Inquisitor responds with a glare.  “—You  **showed**  it to me!”

“Maker preserve us all,” Cullen says on his way out.

–

Night has fallen upon Skyhold.  The moon looms above the balcony of the Inquisitor's private quarters, seemingly just out of reach.

Max is sharpening his daggers.

“So crude.  So  _primal,_ ” Dorian says from the bed, from behind the brim of the book he's been reading.  “You're like an Avvar  _savage_  about to go out on a hunt.”  He licks his lips.  “And look at that.  A full moon to guide you through the underbrush.   _Lucky you_.”

“What are you reading?” Max asks without looking away from the whetstone.

“Oh, you know.  Just some forbidden texts regarding time travel, blood magic, and how to ' _respectfully_ ' animate the dead.  Pretentious crap I managed to smuggle out of Alexius' estate before I left.  —Hey, if you die, do I have permission to animate  _you?_   I'd certainly miss the company.”

Max stops sharpening to ask, “You're gonna fuck a dead guy, Dorian?”

“ _No!_   …  Well, I mean.  I'll try anything  _once_.  —Is that  **poison?** ”

“No.  It’s venom.”  Max slips the vials into a case and then attaches it to his belt.  “I  _am_ a rogue, Dorian, if you weren't aware.”

“Better a rogue than templar.  Wouldn't  _that_  be dramatic?  Star-crossed lovers and all that.  —Rogue's a heavy name, though, isn't it?  What do they call them in Orlais?   _Bards?_ ”

Max can't help but smile.  “I don't sing.”

There's a knock at the door.

“We're having  _ **sex**_  right now!” Dorian announces loudly.  Max throws an empty quiver at him before approaching the door.

“Yes?  —Solas?”

“I apologize for disturbing you, Inquisitor Trevelyan, but this is rather...  _urgent_.  A great weight lies upon my shoulders and I would—”

“Help!  He's tied me up!” Dorian shouts in the background.  “These sex games have gone  _too far!_ ”

“Perhaps I could come back another time,” Solas suggests.

Max says, “Actually, I have a better idea.”

  
     The Inquisitor throws Dorian out of his quarters and locks the door behind him.

“Are you breaking up with me?!” Dorian exclaims while banging on the other side of the door.  “That's  _ **it!**_   I am going to find out why they call him the Iron Bull!  We are  _ **through**_ , Trevelyan!!”

Solas does not think much of this loud-but-muffled exchange.  He does not keep up with their allies in the meticulous way the Inquisitor does, but he understands that he and Dorian have “broken up” about ten times in the last month.  —This triviality fades from him the moment he steps out onto the Inquisitor's balcony.

“ _Oh_ ,” Solas says, amazed by the view.  “I suppose this is why it is called Skyhold.”

“You wanted to talk about something, Solas?”

“Inquisitor...”  Solas strokes the balcony's rails.  “You have have navigated these circumstances with considerable care—unparalleled, really—and it is for that reason I respect you.  And it is  _because_  of that respect that I...  I feel as though I have not been forthright with you or our operation.”

Max looks very serious when he begins to digest what Solas is saying.  “Oh  **no** , are you another Blackwall?  Did you kill somebody?”

“Inquisitor—”

“Are you a  _blood_  mage?”

Solas laughs at the suggestion,  **and then is struck by reality**.  His mouth goes dry.  All he can see is Cinth on the floor, scrubbing away, her mop in a bucket of her own blood.

“ **No** ,” Solas says with more venom than the vials that hang from Max's belt.  “I am  _not_  a blood mage.”

 _ **I**_   _am responsible for the Breach._

 _ **I**_   _gave the Orb to Corypheus._

 _ **I**_   _damned the world._

_This is what you want to tell him, Solas?_

_That's not even your real name.  Not even your real body._

_You're—_

_I'm—_

“You're... gay?”

Solas' daze ends.  “Yes,” he says.  “— _Yes._ I, too, am of the gays.”

“See.  It wasn't that hard, was it?  I always figured, what with the um...”  Max gestures at Solas.  “Everything.”

“Ex _cuse_  me?”

“Let's hug,” Max says.

“What?”

Max pulls Solas into the most awkward hug ever.  Solas just kind of stands there hoping that the Breach will rip back open and interrupt.

“Now get out,” Max says.  “—And stay out of my dreams.”

Solas disapproves, but leaves as requested.

–

Leliana stirs.  She pulls her bed’s covers tighter, up to her eyes, and squints against the sliver of torchlight coming from beyond the ajar door.

“What is it, Robin?” she asks with a morning voice—though the sun has not yet risen.

“Sister Nightingale, a carrier's returned,” the agent says softly.

Leliana sits up.  Robin would not awaken her without good cause.  “How bad is it?”

“I would call it  _grave_ , Sister.”

–

Dorian opens one eye.  He grunts and rolls over, tugging even more of the covers off of Trevelyan and around himself.  “Someone's knocking on the door, Amatus.”

“Fuck off,” the Inquisitor says, half-asleep and shivering his ass off.  He kicks and punches Dorian's back until he frees up some of the covers.

“You  _brute!_ ”

“Go away,” Max says to the continued knocking.  —He opens his eyes when he hears the unmistakable sound of  _lockpicking_.  He leaps out of bed, covers his privates with his smallclothes, and goes for the door.

The door swings open.  Leliana doesn't skip a beat.  She slips her lockpicking tools into her hair—she wears the hood for a reason—and pushes a piece of parchment into the Inquisitor's grasp.

“Orzammar is in  _chaos_ ,” she says.  “The Darkspawn have completely evacuated the thaigs.”

“ **What?** ” Max asks.  He lights a candle and holds it to the report.

“The Deep Roads— **no Darkspawn.**   The Legion of the Dead witnessed the horde  _recede_.  Civil war has erupted overnight.  The dwarves are fighting over who has the rights to occupy each thaig.”

Dorian's silhouette crashes into things in the background as he struggles to put his clothes on in the darkness.  Finally, with his pants on backwards, he approaches the door.  “That, Spymaster, is called a  **Blight** ,” he says with a grimace.

“ _But what of what you have not felled_ ,” Maxwell repeats.  “ _These ones much closer than the Veil._ ”

“—Maxwell,” Dorian says.  He grabs Max's arm.  “The Anchor!”

Leliana backs away as the sickly green light snakes out of the Inquisitor's hand.

“Leliana,” Max starts, quieter than before.  “Get everyone off the ground.”  The Anchor  **crackles**.  “And send a bird to Weisshaupt.   _Now._ ”

A mostly-dressed Max sweeps past them, down the stairs.  “As high up as you can!  Seal the lower floors!  Get the—”

Distant screams ring out.  Maxwell sprints down the stairs, into the eerily empty throne room.  He runs down the hall, shoves the door open, and gets blasted by the same wave of black blood that streaks across Cassandra's face.  Cassandra pulls her sword out of the Hurlock and then kicks the corpse to the blighted ground.

“ **Inquisitor!** ” Cassandra yells over the rising panic.  “They're coming up through the prison!  —And be careful!  Some of them are invisib—”

Max's throat  **doesn't**  get slashed open because he ducks out of the Shriek's way.  The screeching Darkspawn lunges forward with its claws and the rusted blades attached to them, but a mage's Barrier repels its strike.

“Shit!” Cassandra shouts—and then she plunges the edge of her shield into the Shriek's head and shatters its skull.  “Die, demon!”

“They are not demons, my dear,” Vivienne says with a calm only accessible to masters of the Grand Game.  “They are Darkspawn.  And these are the  _small_  ones.”  She snaps her fingers, igniting a row of distant Genlocks and accidentally setting part of the tavern on fire.

That fire is extinguished by Solas' wave of frost.  He slams his staff end against the ground to keep himself from knocking Vivienne's head off with it.  “Watch where you sow your flames,  _First Enchanter!_ ” Solas snaps.  “Innocents still seek to escape!”

“Escape to  **where?** ” Vivienne asks.  She doesn't flinch when the bells sound, or when Inquisition troops pour past them, out of their quarters and into the fray.  “We are surrounded on all sides,  _including_  the ground.”

“Your penchant for pessimism does  _not_  excuse your disregard for—”

“ **Enough!** ” Cassandra interrupts.  “This bickering is over!  First Enchanter, use your mage-flames to seal off the prison!  Melt the damn thing to the ground!  Solas, you are with me.  I will need your healing.”  
  
      “Always the  _healer_ ,” Solas says with a glare.

“Inquisitor—”  Cassandra turns, but he's not there.

“It will take time to load the trebuchets,” Cullen explains as he and Maxwell stride down the battlements.  “I was not expecting a war in the dark of morning, Inquisitor.  —Not with Darkspawn.”

“How long will the gates hold?” Max asks.

“Not long enough.  Not against the entirety of the Deep Roads, and certainly not against an Archdemon.”

Maxwell looks out at the squirming sea of shadows that has turned Skyhold into an island.  His lip quivers and his nostrils flare every time he sees another patch of grass or rock explode open like a disturbed anthill.

“We  **need**  reinforcements, Inquisitor,” Cullen urges.  Crude Darkspawn arrows cut the clouded sky behind him, piercing each and every one of the carrier pigeons Leliana is attempting to send out.  “We need a runner.”

Maxwell shakes his head.

“Inquisitor?” Cullen asks.

“I'm not the Herald of Andraste.  I never was.  I didn't want to be a leader.”  He looks down at his sputtering Anchor.  “Why did this happen to me?”

“Inquisitor.”

“Why did all this have to happen?”

Cullen grabs Maxwell by the front of his uniform and shoves him against a wall.  Pebbles and dust slide off the infrastructure like waterfalls as the Darkspawn's siege equipment crashes against Skyhold's perimeter.  “Pull yourself together!  Tell me to send me the Wardens out!  They'll clear a path for our runner!  You are the Inquisitor!  You  **are**  the Inquisition!  Now tell me!”

“Send the Wardens out, Commander Cullen.”  Max swallows.  “Send the runner.”

Cullen nods and says, “Good.”  He releases the Inquisitor and pats his uniform back into form.  Then he walks away, past rows of soldiers and into his office, where he eyes his lyrium case with a gaze usually reserved for ex-lovers.

He throws the lyrium case off of the battlements, into the Darkspawn horde.

Twenty-three Wardens—all who survived Adamant—charge out of Skyhold's front gate.  Darkspawn swarm them.  Blood, blades, and heads fly.

“Well, Blackwall.  You wanted to play the Warden,” Blackwall says to himself as he stalks out of the gate.  “Now it's time to  _be_  one.  —Dennet!  Bring out my little  _project!_ ”

The construct groans as it is rolled out through the gate behind the Wardens.  The wooden gryphon towers over even the Darkspawn Ogres in scale.  The Inquisition's greatest archers are crouched in the belly of the beast, protected by intersecting layers of wood.  Arrows tipped with fire and poison spew from the gryphon's gaps and the Darkspawn begin to fall.

“ _ **Wardens!**_ ” Blackwall shouts up at the gryphon's head, where a team of his Warden brothers sit.  “Bring these wings  **down!** ”

The Wardens descend into the gryphon's innards, to the pulleys that fill its neck.  A moment later, thirty feet and several tonnes of wingspan come crashing down on the Darkspawn who have dared approach the gryphon's sides.  When the Wardens pull the gryphon's wings back up they are dripping with blood and bone.

Adrenaline surges through Blackwall's veins as he sinks his sword into a Darkspawn's chest.  “In peace, vigilance!  In death,  _ **victory!**_ ”  He charges forward, leaps into the air, and bashes his sword against the horns of one of the foul abominations.

Iron Bull, his horn and head still rattling, turns around and pushes Blackwall.  “ _Not_  cool.”

“Andraste's sweet ass!  Iron  _Bull!_   I mistook you for an Ogre!”

“Yeah, I noticed.”  Bull clutches his horn.

Blackwall sees the man-sized, blood-smeared weapon Bull is carrying and says, “Nice axe.”

Iron Bull chops another Darkspawn's head off.  “Nice gryphon.”

Blackwall ducks when he hears the unmistakable sound of a trebuchet crank clicking into place.  Seconds later, fiery boulders come crashing down around them, splitting the ground and tossing charred Darkspawn into the air.

Iron Bull pulls Blackwall out of the way of an unarmored horse that has just sprinted out of the gates.  It leaps over fallen Wardens, charges under the swings of Ogres, and its coat is so dark that it seems to disappear every time it gets out of range of the battlefield's flames.

Leliana, their runner, is atop it.  She leans into the horse's mane and watches as the opening—the corpse-paved hallway the Wardens and trebuchets created for her—begins to  **close.**   New Darkspawn burst from the ground, replacing their losses with a swiftness she is not certain her steed can rival.

She reaches for her bow.  She sits up against the freezing wind and sees the Darkspawn-free hills beyond Skyhold come into view.  She also sees two dark tides of Darkspawn swelling around her—the hallway's shrieking and salivating walls about to collide and drown her.

She yanks her flapping hood down, out of her eyes, and takes aim.

Cullen leans over the ramparts when he sees Leliana's arrow erupt in the sky.  A line of thick smoke marks its trajectory but is quickly swept away by the furious winds.

“ **EAST!**   Turn the trebuchets!  Sixty degrees, now!!” Cullen shouts at the top of his lungs.  He runs down the ramparts, barking orders at each tower.  “Pull the Wardens back!  Get them through the gates!  Towers two and four, secure reentry!  All other towers, secure our runner!”

Leliana buries herself in the horse's mane when blazing shrapnel and cyclones of dirt begin to clip the ends of her cloak.  The explosions wrack her ears and startle her horse, but each near-death experience just hastens its sprint.  Through a curtain of swishing horse hair she watches the walls of Darkspawn  **combust**  around her, decimated by trebuchet fire.

“Cullen, you wonderful, insane madman,” she whispers—and then she's sliding across the ground through mud and grass.  She hears her horse's guttural screams.  She sees it panicking on the ground, its ankles split open and spraying.

The horde descends upon her.

“What are you  _doing,_  Cullen?!” Cassandra asks as she marches onto the battlements.  “You sent the Spymaster?   _Anyone_  can deliver a message!”

“But none as swiftly as her.”  Then, Cullen yells to his soldiers, “Eighty degrees!  Pay attention to the swarm!  Their movements will reveal her location!”

“You have sent the Divine Elect to  **die** ,” Cassandra says.  
  
     “With all due respect, Seeker, without reinforcements, we will  _all_  die.  —Wardens!  Return to the main hall and lock it down!  Board the windows!  Board the  **floors!** ”

The Shriek slides its blade all the way through Leliana's shoulder.  She screams out.  Sleight of hand guides a dagger of unknown origin directly into the Shriek's face.  The Shriek shrieks—but these kinds of Darkspawn do not travel alone.  With the Darkspawn's blade still in her shoulder, Leliana bleeds into the night.

Two blurs circle each other in the darkness.

“I know you are there, little Darkspawn,” Leliana whispers.  “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

“But I am not a Darkspawn,” Leliana's stealthed foe replies.  “I am not dark, nor do I spawn.”

“—Cole?!”

Cole bleeds into view.  “I heard her crying,” he says, looking beyond Leliana at the horse.  “I came to help.”

“Get out of the way!” Leliana shouts.  She leaps out of the shadows, shoves Cole out of the Ogre's path, and then throws a flask into its face, sending it reeling.  A swarm of bees keeps the towering beast at bay, but hundreds more still approach.

“I'm sorry,” Cole says to the horse as it is consumed by the encroaching Darkspawn.  He backs up into Leliana.  They now stand at the center of the Darkspawn sea, the monsters so close that they can smell their snarling.  If there was ever any chance of escape, it is gone now.

Leliana kneels down.  Mechanical clicks are muffled beneath her hands.  She covers the metal's sheen with grass and mud.

“Cole,” she says.  “Don't move.”  She stands up after she's finished.  “Promise me you won't move no matter what you see.”

“I promise.  I think.  I don't  _want_  to not move forever.  Why don't you want me to move, Leliana?”

“Because I've just surrounded us with landmines.”

Leliana pulls Cole in and covers as much of him with her cloak as possible.

“She doesn't  _want_  to,” Cole says as explosives go off all around them.  “She wanted to save it for the big one.”

Despite the apparent consequences of approaching Leliana and Cole, the Darkspawn do not hesitate.  They march through the field of traps and mines, unrelenting.  Ogres fall backwards as caltrops sink into their soles.  Hurlocks are transformed into shrapnel and flesh.  The head of a lost axe cuts a notch out of the brim of Cole's hat, but he doesn't seem to notice.

“She doesn't want you to know, but she's just as afraid,” Cole says.  “Lost.”

Leliana shudders as sharp debris continues to graze them.  If she ever doubted the Maker's existence, that doubt is gone now.

“Cole, I would rather not die with this curiosity,” Leliana says with each miraculous breath.  “ _Who_  is afraid?  Who is lost?”

“The witch-y one.”

The moonlight that illuminates the battle at Skyhold suddenly turns  **violet**.  The moon has been eclipsed by the webbing of a dragon's wings.  The aerial colossus' high-pitched shriek stuns the Darkspawn and Inquisition alike, bringing many to cover their ears.  Leliana and Cole stand stiller than ever as the dragon descends upon them—and floods their enemies in a breath of flame.

The Inquisitor stands at the peak of Skyhold's tallest tower.  He puts down his telescope and says, “I hope you know what you're doing, Morrigan.”

When Leliana sees the last of her traps go off, when she finally realizes that the dragon is carving a path  _for_  them and not through them, she darts down the mountainside with Cole in tow.

“Has she escaped?” Cole asks, his sleeve tight in Leliana's grasp.  “Does she yet live?  Am I responsible?  Did she burn under a rock, under the flames of a beast?  I wish it were coursing through me, blue and wild.  At least it's not red.  But it's too late.  Gone.”

The Spymaster releases Cole.  “Can you make it on your own?” she asks.

Cole shifts on the tuft of springy, untainted grass they've managed to escape to.  He looks back at the battlefield now beset by a dragon.  Huge swaths of Darkspawn appear to be retreating while others continue to bash Skyhold's gates—some with crude siege weaponry, some with their bare heads.

“Forget.”

Leliana's guilt and concern disappears—if it was ever there to begin with.  She glares at the night and questions why she's standing at the edge of the battlefield,  _hesitating_.  She rips the rusted blade out of her shoulder with nothing more than a wince and then runs.

Cassandra follows the dragon's flight down the battlements.  “I cannot believe what I am  _seeing_ ,” she says to Cullen.

“That makes two of us,” Cullen says.  He unsheathes his sword, unsure of what will happen next.

“Is that Corypheus' dragon?  Is it  _helping_  us?”

“No.”  Cullen points up at the sky.  “ **That**  is Corypheus' dragon!”

The Red Lyrium Dragon glows gold as it dives out of the clouds and sinks its talons into Morrigan.  The two dragons tumble right out of the sky and slam into the ground, triggering an earthquake— _and_  a landslide.  Cullen and Cassandra stare in disbelief as Skyhold cracks down the seams.

The birds of Skyhold's rookery are flying against the bars of their cages, squawking madly.  Their cries do not seem to reach Solas, who—three floors below—can only watch as his unfinished mosaic  **crumbles**  around him.  He shakes his head, walks off of one side of the room just before it  _detaches_  from the other side, and then leaves.

The tears in Maxwell's eyes quiver as he watches the Red Lyrium Dragon  **slash**  Morrigan's wings open.  The dragons knock down trees and crush waves of Darkspawn under their weight as they roll and flap out of each other's way.  They snap at each other, their fangs bared, and whenever one lands a blow, the other lets out a pained screech whose force propels lines of Darkspawn to the ground.

The Lyrium Dragon's roar scatters the clouds.  It charges at Morrigan and sinks its teeth into her side.  It claws and flaps its way through the fire and smoke to  **shave**  off Morrigan's scales.  The glistening plates fall and crush still-emerging Darkspawn below.

Morrigan lets out a tired, high-pitched whine.  She unravels into glittering ribbons of green and violet magic that eventually fade.  She finds herself lying on the ground, human again.  She is able to reach down and realize that she's bleeding everywhere before the exhaustion renders her unconscious—right beside the Red Lyrium Dragon's clawed foot.

The Lyrium Dragon looks Maxwell's way and releases a sky-shattering roar.

Cullen is taken back to that moment ten years ago when he was a tenderfoot sniveling in the Circle Tower.  He felt so defenseless then.  So out of his league.

He feels that way right now.  And when the Red Lyrium Dragon simply flies over Skyhold's gates and into the compound, he knows it  **is**  that way.

“And I thought  _Kirkwall_  had problems,” Varric says when he spots the dragon's silhouette behind the mostly-barricaded stained glass windows.  He turns back to the rest of the throne room.  “GET UNDER SOMETHING!!”

Skyhold's civilians cry out for Andraste as the dragon's tail  **slices**  through the wall and ceiling.  Waterfalls of rubble come tumbling down on Skyhold's traders, gardeners, and laborers—few of whom actually  _believed_  they were safe in here.

The collapsing roof chases Varric across the room.  Sharp fragments of stained glass tickle his back and get caught in his chest hair.   _This is gonna make one hell of a final chapter_ , he thinks.

Those begging for Andraste have their answers prayered: The throne room's ceiling-height statues of Andraste crack as they are loosed from their frames.  The statues groan, tip, and fall towards Skyhold's huddled kitchen workers.

Varric fires a round at one of the statues.  The arrow explodes—as does the statue, reduced to small chunks that Dorian's flurry of Barrier spells deflects.

“Andraste's right  _tit,_  I am glad Maxwell guilt-tripped me into learning that spell,” Dorian says.

The other statue just stops falling.  The kitchen workers scamper out of its shadow as it hovers in the air, guided by Solas' glowing hands.  Solas grunts and then magically leans the statue against one of the few walls that remain.

“She's alive, you know,” Cole says.

Cassandra and Cullen are both startled by Cole's appearance.  In the background, with just the sweep of its wings, the Red Lyrium Dragon lays waste to the tavern—memories of Wicked Grace and drunken after-battle blackouts demolished in an instant.

“Sprinting, sliding, spying in the dark.  But the wind's in her hair and she can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  She's missed this.”

“Cassandra,” Cullen says with renewed confidence.  “Gather all troops.  Prepare to take down a  **dragon**.”

—

_There was a time when such a foe would be no more than a nuisance._

Cullen's shining blade crashes against the dragon's scales.  Sparks sweep past the wrinkles on his face, illuminating the toll that commanding the Inquisition has taken.

_A time when ships sailed on clouds and crystalline kingdoms glittered in the sky._

The dragon's claws gouge Cassandra's face, gifting her a new scar.  Part of her armor melts beneath its breath.

_Such a time has passed._

The dragon flaps its wings, summoning winds that break the bones of all who approach.  Inquisition soldiers, their necks broken and their spines twisted, fall into the mud.

_Melava'llan—forgive me._

Iron Bull wheezes and props himself with his axe.  He sucks the saliva back into his mouth and glares at the dragon who just broke off the tip of his right horn.

Varric watches broken pieces of Bianca, his crossbow, get washed away by a river of blood.  He looks at his hands like he's lost the real thing.

When Sera witnesses the dragon eat Horsemaster Dennet whole—he was a fool for trying to attack it with a pitchfork—she flees.

“So,  **this**  is the Inquisition,” Corypheus' tall silhouette booms.  He flies out of the sky, across the moon, to his victorious dragon's side.  “ **This**  is what all your efforts have wrought.   _Tell_  me...”

Corypheus' leisurely approach prompts fearful soldiers—those who can still stand—to back away.

“Where is your Maker  _ **now**_?” Corypheus asks.

With blood gushing down one side of his face, Blackwall says, “He's up your  _ass_ , that's where he is.”

Corypheus chuckles.  “What  _I_  offer,” he says with the raise of his hand, “is a  **real**  god.”

Magic courses between Corypheus' long, monstrous fingers.  All around him, Inquisition soldiers on the verge of death are  **revived.** Their wounds seal shut.  Their pain wanes.  Color returns to their battle-stained cheeks.

“I offer a world of  _perfection_ ,” Corypheus explains on his way to the top of the stairs.  Soldiers part for him out of fear and a convoluted sense of respect.  “A utopia is within our grasp.  A world devoid of the terror and destruction you see before you.  You need only help me  **take it**.”

The Red Lyrium Dragon roars and turns, warning any who would dare approach Corypheus' back.

“A  _utopia_ , you say?” asks an Antivan accent.  Everyone, including Corypheus, looks Josephine's way.  Untouched by the battle, her clipboard's candle still burning, the Ambassador appears to be the only structure in the Inquisition that still stands.

“And what of the elves?” Josephine asks.  “Would  _they_  be a part of this utopia?”

Corypheus grins, bows at Josephine, and then says, “Ahh,  _Ambassador_.  There is no need for peace talks today, for all I  _offer_  is peace—an everlasting peace spanning all of Thedas, eternal, undying.”  Corypheus turns from Josephine to address everyone else.  “A paradise in which the elves would be  **more**  than welcome.”

Josephine jots something down, as if this encounter is no different than one with the Orlesians or the Fereldens.  “You would not enslave them, then.”

“ _Enslave_  them?” Corypheus asks in the most offended way.

“As you enslaved the Templars.  As you have enslaved the Mages, the Wardens, and the Darkspawn.”

Any silent, battle-addled support of Corypheus' utopia begins to crumble.  Their audience begins whispering and arguing amongst themselves—an exchange Corypheus interrupts with, “ **Give**  me the boy!!  Bring to me the Anchor, what is rightfully mine, and your every fantasy will become a reality!  The Inquisitor is all that stands between you and a  _new_  age—an age not of dragons but of  **progress!** ”

“ **Free**  yourselves from these shackles!” Corypheus shouts, his lyrium-framed face twisted with anger.  The impending sunrise glints on the horizon, giving the sky a bloody hue.  “Whosoever brings the Inquisitor to me will rule the Golden City alongside me for all  _ **time!!**_ ”

“I'm right here, you ugly motherfucker,” Maxwell says from behind Corypheus.  He lunges out of a smokescreen and plunges two venom-dipped daggers right into Corypheus' back.

Corypheus lets out a wet, eerily subdued growl before saying, “ _Stupid_  boy.”

The Red Lyrium Dragon swipes Maxwell with its tail, breaking bones and sending him across the courtyard.  Corypheus, with the daggers still embedded in his back, stalks toward the Inquisitor.

If Skyhold was not taken by chaos before, it is now.  Troops rush after Corypheus but are blocked off by the dragon.  Some head for the gates, desperate to escape while they can, even if it means running through the Darkspawn horde.  A few of the soldiers are taken by Corypheus' promise of an eternal paradise and turn on their own brothers.

“ **Back**  off,” Corypheus barks when he senses Cassandra closing in on him with her sword drawn.  He merely raises a hand at her and a wave of telekinetic force knocks her to the ground.

Maxwell floats in and out of consciousness.  He can see Mother Giselle standing above him.  “The dawn will come,” she says to Corypheus with her head held high.

“No,” Corypheus says.  His hulking silhouette quivers in Giselle's eyes.  “Not for  _ **you**_.”

Corypheus strikes Giselle down and then kicks her aside.  His shoulders seesaw with predatory intent as he closes in on the Inquisitor.  Then he grabs him by the collar and yanks him up.

The Anchor ignites brighter than ever.  The Orb, which Corypheus brings closer to Max, flashes with excitement.  “If there  _is_  a god,” Corypheus says with a lyrium-twisted grin, “ **now**  would be the time to beg.”

Corypheus looks over his shoulder to see why the ground is trembling.  An Orlesian  _army_  has just burst through Skyhold's front gates.

“ _ **NO!!**_ ” Corypheus exclaims as the sea of chevaliers collide with the Red Lyrium Dragon.  The lyrium covering Corypheus flares and sings with rage.  “YOU ARE TOO  _ **LATE!**_ ”

He plunges the Orb into Maxwell's chest.

–

Maxwell is awakened by wind chimes.  When he opens his eyes he is looking at a canopy so green that it's  _neon_.  While trying to get up he notices that he can see through the crystalline floor—and that scares the shit out of him.

“I'm in a tree,” he says to no one as he backs away from the platform's edge, to the tree trunk at its center.  There are carvings in the tree—a familiar language, but one he can't read.  To his regret, he looks down past his feet, into the misty abyss below.

Those are clouds down there.

Maxwell stares in awe at the beautiful crescent-shaped ship that is sailing past his platform.  It creaks gently, as it would if it were sailing down the still waters of a canal—but it's not.  It's sailing in the  **sky** , as are the glistening  _castles_  in the distance.

“Hey!” Max shouts at the ship when he realizes there are elves aboard it.  “Hey, stop!  Hold on!  Help me!  I'm a friend of Solas!”  He stutters when he remembers what Solas' relationship with the Dalish is like.  “Never mind!  I am an enemy of Solas!  —Wait!  Don't leave me here!  Don't...”

Max stops waving his arms around when the ship disappears into the mists.

“Oh, thank  _Andraste_ ,” he says when he discovers an elven woman on the other side of the tree trunk.  She's hunched over a decorated bench carved right into the tree.  Judging by the mortar, the pestle, and the exotic herbs Max has never seen before, she's making potions.

“Uh, what I meant to say is—thank  _Mythal!_ ”  That's a name he'll never forget.  He leans in to tap the woman's shoulder.  She turns around, mortar and pestle in hand, and walks right through him.  “Oh  **fuck**  that,” Max says, his complexion now more ghostly than the elf's.

“This is a dream,” Max concludes.

“Almost,” says another.

Max looks his way.  The elf is male and dressed in shiny fluttering silks.  He's sitting at the edge of the platform, casually dangling his legs.  He's one push away from falling miles to his death.

“Listen, I've fallen off of buildings in dreams before,” Max says.  “ _It still hurts._   Get away from there.”

“It's not a dream.  It's a memory,” the elf says.  He side-eyes Max with what seems to be waning interest.

Max takes a good look around.  “Sure as hell isn't  _my_  memory,” he says.

“It's mine,” the elf says.

“Who are you?”

“Fen'Harel.”  He looks away.  His wispy white hair glints in the green-tinted sunlight.  “You've known me as Solas.”

Maxwell remembers to breathe.  “Fen'Harel,” he says almost a minute later.  “That's the wolf statue we saw at the Temple of  _Mythal_ , right?”

“It doesn't matter,” Harel says.

“Because I'm dead,” Maxwell suggests.  When Harel doesn't respond—when he doesn't even look his way—Max turns around.  Even in death, he doesn't want anyone to see him cry.  But he starts audibly sobbing when he looks down at his arm and sees that the Anchor is gone.

“I fear there is no apology I could construct that would be significant,” Harel says eventually.  “But I  _do_  apologize.  Were it not for my own mistakes, none of this would have come to pass.”

Maxwell turns back and shouts, “You were a fucking  _ **god**_  the entire time and you didn't think to help us?!”

“It is not that simple.”

Harel speaks the truth: He's no wolf and he looks nothing like Solas.

Max replies, “Well I've got all  _fucking_  day.”

A symphony of shrills creeps into the canopy.  Shadows steal the sound from the wind chimes around them.  Maxwell backs up when the sky city begins to shake.  Trees bend and crack under the weight of dark silhouettes too big for Max to fathom.

“What's going on?” Max asks, his eyes wide with fear.

“An invasion,” Harel says.

Explosions of supernatural size go off in the distance.  Spires and trees crumble, but some  **retaliate**.

One of the colossal trees  _comes to life_  and begins swinging its branches at the flock of dragons that set it on fire.  The thousands of elves living in the tree evacuate quickly, some via airships and others by leaping into mirrors.

“Solas.  —Fen'Harel.  Where am I?”

“Arlathan, in the years before the Fall,” Harel says.  He takes Maxwell by his Anchor-less arm and pulls him to one side of the platform.  “We are not in any danger, but it would be wise to leave before this arla'elgar is destroyed.”

“What's that supposed to mean?!”

Harel waves at the air.  A crystal walkway shimmers into existence right in front of them, leading to another platform.  “This way!” he says.  The walkway sings under each of his and Max's footsteps.  A moment later, the platform they came from gets  **smashed**  from the top down, like a controlled demolition.

Max wipes the crystal shards off his shoulders, the gleaming flecks off his lip.  He shakes with adrenaline.

“We had our wars too,” Harel explains.  “But they were wars between  _gods_.  Maxwell, when you decided to stay and fight Corypheus, that was  _your_  decision.”

“A stupid one, in hindsight,” Max mutters.  His hair gets swept out of his eyes by another shockwave.

“The gods of old, however...  They used their followers like pawns in a game.”  Harel gestures to the destruction all around them, to a decades-long battle the scale of which Max has never seen.  “They warred over pride, greed, and envy, all the while knowing that victory was unobtainable.”

Arlathan begins to shift and blur.  The memory transforms into a locale that Max  _does_  recognize: Morrigan called it the Crossroads, the place where all Eluvians meet.

But this version is different from the gray, stagnant void Morrigan introduced him to.  The mammoth mirrors that tower above Max and Harel are unbroken.  They shine brilliantly in the sun and are surrounded by deliberately planted gardens and gifts—honored like tombs.

“So I sealed the gods away,” Harel says.  “I sealed all of us away, in Eluvians.  I believed that doing so would bring an end to Elvhenan's conflicts.”  He makes eye contact with Max.  “I was wrong.”

That's when Max realizes that the mirrors  _are_  tombs.  “You sealed yourself too?” he asks.

“Yes.  It would have been hypocritical for me not to.  I gave my vessel to...”

Before Harel can decide  _not_  to share this memory with Max, the Fade stirs.  A giant ghostly wolf emerges from the mist.  It passes under archways built to accommodate its size and then approaches a still pond.

The wolf bows its head to the ground.  A pretty elf girl slides down the wolf's crown, off its snout, to the pond's edge.  She's laughing.  Her hair whips in the wind.  She plants a kiss on the wolf's shut eye.

Her face and arms are covered in vallaslin—tattoos.

“What was her name?” Max asks.

“Melava'llan,” Harel says.  “She was...”  He swallows, and although he looks away, he cannot escape his own memory.  “I gave her my Orb.  She was meant to use it to awaken me from my slumber when the time was right.  I suppose that time never came.

“But I  _did_  awaken, in part, eventually.  A Tevinter magister by the name of Cavernicus found the Orb, its power spent by the ages, and was able to restore just a fraction of its power with blood magic.  In turn, a fraction of  _me_  walked out of the Eluvian and ripped his face to shreds.”

The panes of memories shift and gleam around them.  Max watches a young elf slave named Solas cower as the wolf, Fen'Harel, closes in on him—and then  _becomes_  him.

Max's smile is one of shock and disgust.  “So you hijack Solas'  _body_?” he asks.  “You lock the gods away with your Orb and fuck up elfkind and—  And I'm supposed to feel  **sorry**  for you?  Is that what all this is for?  What, did you hand the Orb over to Corypheus  _ **too?!**_ ”

The pondside memory gets swept away by the Fade's tides.

Max's heart flutters.  He glares and says, “ _Tell_  me you didn't.”

“All that I could.”

“ _ **Why?!**_ ”

“Because the orbs are  **keys** ,” Harel says, his voice getting louder and more defensive.  “Because almost all of me—all of my power—was still trapped in the Eluvian.”  The Fade thunders.  The Crossroads begins to fall apart, rapidly aging around them.  Harel circles Max now, his gestures accusatory.  “Because I needed to release myself in my entirety, no matter the cost, even if it meant working side by side with Corypheus.  Only  **he**  could could restore the Orb in full, and only I—only the  **gods**  can restore what once was!”

“So you kill the Divine,” Max says, shaking his head.  “How'd that work out for you?”

“Her death was necessary.  Blood acts as a connection to the spirits of the Fade—a conduit—and no being on Thedas has more connections than the Divine.  The spirits recognized her.  Trusted her.  —I never claimed to be a  _paragon_ , Maxwell.  My hands are not unsullied in this.  I did not know what Corypheus' intentions were.  Had I known—”

“Just shut up,” Max says.  The Crossroads' archways crumble silently.  Its trees blacken.  Their leaves crisp and turn to ash.  “Just leave me alone.  Go away, Fen'Harel.”  Mirrors lose their luster.  “Or whoever you are.”

Harel grabs Max's arm and says, “No.  This isn't over.”  A painfully cold and strong wind grazes them.  “Do you see what's happening?  This is no illusion.  Corypheus has achieved godhood.  He's tearing the Fade apart at the seams.”

Max pauses to think, but ultimately rips his arm from Harel's grasp.  “I don't care,” he says.

“Do you care about your friends?”

Max was about to walk away, into the haze of ash, and just disappear forever.  That question stops him.

“They're still fighting,” Harel says.  “Hoping that some miracle will happen, perhaps.  If we give them enough time, maybe one will.”

Max smirks at the ridiculousness of all this.  He looks over his shoulder and asks, “What, should we march up to the Black City and give Corypheus a gift basket?  Welcome him to the neighborhood?”

“I'm not saying we should  _march_  there.”

A giant howling wolf sprints through the Battle of Ostagar.  It swerves through slain-but-still-fighting spirits and ducks under trebuchet fire.  It leaps through the rippling ground, into a memory of Kirkwall.  Max, who rides atop the wolf, makes brief eye contact with a certain Lothering refugee just before the docks melt away.

“Harel!” Max shouts down at the wolf.  He tightens his grip on Harel's mane—it's all that keeps him from falling off and spiraling into the chaos of the Fade.  “How are we going to get up there?!”  Clawed, otherworldly lightning snakes across the sky, illuminating the Black City's broken spires.

Harel's words materialize in Max's mind: “Corypheus has used the fully powered Orb to reopen the Breach!  With the Veil torn wide open, there will soon be little difference between the Fade and reality!  I do not know which rules apply and which no longer do.  What I do know is that nothing separates a dreamer from his dreams.”

Harel suddenly veers off to the left.  He leaps off an endless obsidian staircase, over an ocean of forgotten-but-echoing Avvar idols.  He lands on a table in the Winter Palace's ballroom, sending platters of food and champagne glasses flying.  The disembodied masks that inhabit the ball scatter and gasp.

Queen Maskene, the biggest and most extravagant mask of them all, floats up to the balcony to see what all the fuss is about.  “What is the meaning of this?!” the mask demands.

“Like my life couldn't get any weirder,” Max says.

“Hold on!” Harel shouts.  He leaps onto the ballroom's only chandelier and swipes at it until it breaks off the ceiling.  He and (the hysterically screaming) Max come crashing down along with the fixture.  When the chandelier's crystals shatter and its lights are snuffed, they are left in total darkness.

It's so silent all of a sudden that Max hears himself panting.  “Harel?” he asks.  He pats Harel's fur and determines that he's still there under him.  He slides off of Harel's back.

“Harel,” Max whispers again in the dark.  “Fen'Harel.”  He nudges him.  “Don't leave me alone like this.  Wake up.”

“He  _did_ ,” Cole says.

Fen'Harel explodes into a thousand swirling remnants of magic.  Veilfire torches erupt on the glistening black walls all around Max.  The shadows of spined spires shine on a bloody, glinting horizon.

Max shudders as the horrifying majesty of the Black City rises up before him.  It wails.  It waits.

—

On the outskirts of Skyhold, high in the hills, a ruined tower has been found by a group of Darkspawn.  The leader of the group, a Hurlock Emissary, stands at the ruin's center.  Rain is pouring in from where the roof once stood, washing the blood off the Emissary's armor.

The Emissary chuckles, inciting laughter and victorious stomping from his underlings.  He kneels down to where Solas lies peacefully in the grass.  The grass curls and dies at the Emissary's mere presence.

“Goodnight, dreamer,” the Emissary whispers into Solas' long elf ears.  And then he yanks the sword out of Solas' chest and heart.

Wild cackling fills the night.

—

 **Bow!  Bow to your new**   _ **Maker!**_

For most, it's impossible to argue with the earthshaking voice coming out of the bigger-than-ever Breach that is now  **swallowing**  Skyhold whole.  Inquisition and Orlais troops alike fall to their knees and beg for forgiveness.  Archdemons coat the sky, literally tearing down the stars and moon of this Fade-touched realm.

**I am Corypheus, the one true god!**

His voice shatters towers.  It splits the ground and rips the skin from the unbelievers.

**I usher in a new age.  A perfect age, an everlasting age!**

**From this moment forth: The Empyreal Age!**

“It cannot be!” Cassandra shouts against the howling wind.  She stabs her sword into the ground and uses it as leverage to keep herself from being blown off the cliffside along with everything else.

Vivienne scrapes a line in the dirt with her staff.  A wall of fire erupts between her and the Darkspawn.  “Just  _try_  me, darlings,” she taunts.  Then she looks over her shoulder at Cullen.  “Quickly!  We've run out of time!”

“I know,” Cullen says as he continues to drag his own soldiers' corpses into the stables.

Iron Bull's got bodies stacked on his shoulders, hanging off his horn, and under his arms.  He throws them onto the mountain of corpses they are building—what looks to be an unlit pyre.

All of them stop collecting the dead when the rest of Skyhold is  **detached**  from the earth by the Breach's crackling twisters.  They watch helplessly as the gardens, throne room, and chunks of the battlements slowly rise into the mouth of the Breach.

“ **Bull!** ” Vivienne snaps.  “Stop admiring the sparkly lights and move those bodies!”  
  
     “Yes, Ma'am.  Right away, Ma'am.”

Varric and Sera are carrying a particularly charred body to the pile.

“You an' me never talk, Varric.  S'like you're not one'a my people,” Sera says.

“What?” Varric asks.  “Listen, Buttercup, I can barely understand you half the time.”

“Not much more intimate than carrying some burnt up dead guy, yeah?  Can see his dick and everything.  What's left of it, anyway.  We've grown closer after this, I think.”

“Yeah,” Varric says looking mortified.  “Totally.”

Scout Harding, lying belly-down in the stable's loft, snipes another Darkspawn just before it can reach Vivienne.  Her arrow arm goes weak when she sees a winged silhouette break out of the clouds.  “Dragon!” she shouts.  “Incoming!”

“ _ **Arch**_ demon!” Cullen clarifies.  He unsheathes his blade so quickly that it rings.  “Vivienne, fall back!  Bull, Blackwall, with me!”

“I need more  **time!** ” Dorian shouts from the stable's innards.

“This is the Inquisition's last stand,” Cullen says.  “No matter the cost, we  **hold this line!** ”

—

Anora reaches out of the carriage to keep Alistair from leaving, but he rips his arm out of her gasp and stalks into the Hinterlands' battle-razed wheat fields.

“Alistair,” Anora pleads.  “Get back in the car.  It's dangerous.”

The King's armor gleams green.  He turns that way, to the Breach.

His army won't make it in time.   _Thedas_  may not make it.

“Anora,” Alistair says.  “I'm sending you back to Denerim.  And, um...  It wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be.  You and me, and this, I mean.”

They stare at each other from a distance.  Alistair's brows knit when he realizes she's trying not to cry.  Anora never cries.  The last time Alistair saw her cry was at her father's execution.

“It was okay,” Anora says with a smile made tired by a decade of politics.  “You are a kind man, Alistair.”

–

“Cole?”

“Yes, Inquisitor?”

“I'm glad you're here.”

“Oh.  I'm glad I am here too.  I would not want to be outside right now.  It's very windy out there.”

Cole and Max are walking up a wet, porus staircase that seems to be made of gleaming volcanic rock.  Black buildings loom over them, their tops extending infinitely into the abyssal sky.  White and green light flickers in the buildings' hundreds of keyhole-shaped windows.

Shadows move in the windows.  They're being watched.

“Can I tell you something, Cole?”

“I don't know.   _Can_  you tell me something?”

“When all this started...  After the explosion at the Conclave, when I woke up and Cassandra and Leliana had me in chains, I kept asking myself:  _Why me?  —_ I think I know why.

“Before all this happened, I was a thief.  I was a looter too.  —It's the family business.  I remember my dad taking me down to Lothering after the Darkspawn destroyed it when I was just a kid.  We sifted through it, made a lot of gold.  Got me started, I guess.  Shit caught up with my dad and I think he's in prison in Antiva somewhere.”  Max stops walking and takes a breath.  “—Anyway, I got mixed up with these Carta guys and started looting Dwarven  _thaigs_.  That's where I found the Orb.  I sold it to an auction house in Orzammar.  I didn't know what it was.  I just wanted gold.

“I wanted to die when I saw Corypheus carrying it in Haven.”

Cole taps his fingertips together.  He peeks out from under the brim of his hat and says, “That is rather beautiful for a world with no Maker.”

They reach the top of the staircase.  The Golden Throne lies before them, broken and upturned and covered in ash just like all the other rubble in this once-holy hall.  The throne has been swept aside to make room for a  _new_  one: The  **Inquisitor's**.

Corypheus Himself sits cross-legged and slouching at the very end of the hall.  A howling vortex of unstable magic as big as the Breach separates them from Him.  —It  **is**  the Breach.

“You stole my fucking  _chair?_ ” Max asks, and his voice echoes.

“I took more than that, Child of Andraste.”  With a subtle gesture, Corypheus draws bits and pieces of Skyhold out of the Breach's depths.  They drift over Max and Cole, into various corners of the Fade.  “And soon I will take your  _friends_  as well.  They will litter the sky like stars.  —But first I must thank you.  Without your aid—if you had not found the Orb—none of this would have come to pass.”

Corypheus slowly rises from the throne.  He shambles down the anxiously long hall, toward Max and the Breach, growing taller and taller the closer He gets.

When He reaches the Breach, Corypheus is of colossal size befitting a god.  He wades into the Breach's center as if it is a still pond—but it's not.  The Breach  **rips**  Corypheus apart!  Rivers of magic cut Corypheus' flesh away.  Debris impale Him.  Even when His face is sloughed off by the chaotic forces, He somehow doesn't flinch.

Corypheus, the God, the Maker, grins when His lips reform.  He chuckles when His voice box and lyrium-filled lungs gather energy from the Fade and reassemble right in front of Max's eyes.  The Breach completely destroys and completely recreates Him over and over again.

He extends His wiry arm to Max.  “ _ **Join**_  me, Herald of Andraste,” He says.  “The people of this world know and respect you.  You could ease their transition into their new paradise.  You could rule alongside a  **god**.”

Corypheus' claw-like hand is so massive that it has its own field of gravity.  Max shakes in its shadow, his hair drifting towards it.

Max closes his eyes.

Corypheus glowers.  “You would deny a real god?  A  _true_  god?” He asks.  “A god that stands right before you?  A god capable of  _ **ANYTHING!!**_ ”

Corypheus emits a bewildered screech.  Rage Demons burst out of the ground all around Him.  He reaches into the Breach  _ **AND CRUSHES VAL ROYEAUX WITH ONE HAND.  THE CITY EXPLODES.  ALL OF IT, VANQUISHED IN AN INSTANT.**_

“ **Everything**  I have done, Inquisitor!  Everything I have done I have done for  _ **you!**_   So desperate for guidance, so desperate for meaning in your insignificant lives that you constructed  _ **LIES**_  to fill the void!

“Well I  **went**  to the Golden City!  I saw the throne, empty, stagnant, never-existing—a reflection of your naive  _ **BELIEFS**_ , nothing more!!  And now I stand before you, the Maker made real, and you deny  _ **me?!**_

“ _ **SAY SOMETHING!!**_ ”

Qunari airships emerge from secret ports and beeline to Thedas, but it is too late.

Rivers of blood run down Tevinter's streets, Venatori cultists ready to meet their Maker.

Cassandra says something to Cullen but he never hears it.  His fingers go limp in her hands.

“It's okay to be afraid... of being alone,” Max says softly to Corypheus.

“Was it worth it?” Max asks.  “Now that you're a god, do you feel less alone?  Are you not scared anymore?”

Corypheus, even in His gargantuan godhood, looks stunned.  He doesn't answer.

Cole says, “Prayers, hopes, dreams—each fleeting, but together unending.  The weight of the world literally on your shoulders, but it's too late.”

_Harel.  What's it like being a god?_

_What a big question, Melava'llan._

_It is a responsibility worth bearing, and a fate I would wish upon no one._

Corypheus' frightened gasp permeates all of Thedas.

“Time's up,” Cole says.

Beads of Cullen's blood drift into the red rivers swirling around Dorian's arms, chest, and staff.

Vivienne's organs splash under the weight of an ogre.  A Hurlock Emissary's fireball blasts Cassandra's shield to bits.  One of those bits cuts into Varric's neck.

Blackwall throws himself between Dorian and the Archdemon.  He yells something.

Dorian can't hear him.  Dorian can't hear anything.  He's staring down at the cube-shaped amulet in his palm.  “Even if it's for just a little while longer,” he whispers.

Then he throws the amulet into the air, where it floats and glows a sickly green.  Dorian pulls his staff back, dragging the last of the blood out of the mountain of corpses they collected.  The blood and  ~~amulet~~  Orb

 **collides**  with  ~~Maxwell's~~  Dorian's chest.  He screams as the Orb's power ravages his body.  Corypheus pulls the Orb away and glares at the unexpected guest.

“Your pathetic attempt to manipulate the timeline, while quaint, is  _ **futile**_ ,” Corypheus says.  He shoves Dorian out of the way and lunges at the Inquisitor.

Dorian leans out of the grass and raises a hand.  A bolt of lightning crashes down and blasts Maxwell further into the courtyard, beyond Corypheus' reach.

Corypheus scowls.  “A  _noble_  sacrifice,” he says as he stalks toward Dorian.  “Your undying love will surely be remembered across the ages.”

Corypheus grabs Dorian by the throat and slams him up against a pillar so hard that it crumbles.  The destabilized roofing groans.  Dark flames flutter across the Orb Corypheus holds, ready to be unleashed upon Dorian and utterly annihilate him.

“Any last words?” Corypheus asks.

“Y-Yes,” Dorian manages beneath Corypheus' supernaturally strong grip.  “One: That question is a little cliché, isn't it?  Two: Celene's army is killing your dragon.”

“ _ **WHAT?!**_ ”

Corypheus turns that way just in time to see the Red Lyrium Dragon get one of its wings sawed off.  His eyes ignite with rage.  He tosses Dorian aside and then leaps into the air, where he remains.  He flies over fallen rubble and closes in on the would-be dragonslayers.

“Quickly!” Cullen yells.  “Bring it down!  Off with its head!”

Cassandra leaps onto the dragon's neck.  She slashes at its scales but they're too tough for her blade.  She climbs up onto the dragon's writhing, screeching, snapping head, intent on weighing it down.  “Shit!  It's too strong!”

Suddenly, Cassandra feels herself being hugged tightly by—Iron Bull?!

“Hey,” he says to her horrified face.  Their combined weight forces the dragon's head down.  Celene's forces begin chopping at the dragon's neck like it's a tree trunk.

Corypheus screams in denial when he sees red lyrium blood gush out of his dragon's disconnected neck.  Ribbons of energy, freed from the dragon's body, return to Corypheus.

“So,” Corypheus says, trembling in the sky, “ **this**  is what you are willing to do to prevent the birth of a god—the advent of a paradise.”  He raises the Orb high.  “Perhaps there is no salvation for your addled minds, but there  _ **is**_  a place for you who would reject ascension:  **Death!** ”

Corypheus suddenly looks so pained that he almost drops the Orb.  He touches his stomach and realizes that the trembling isn't caused by adrenaline or by the Red Lyrium Dragon's power roiling through him—it's caused by venom and his own mortality.  He looks over his shoulder, paralysis slowing his movements, and seethes at the twin daggers sticking out of his back.

That's when Morrigan's dragon form breaks through the clouds behind Corypheus.  She swoops down, clamps her jaws around his vulnerable upper body, and separates it from the lower half.  She flies away.

Corypheus' lower half falls out of the sky and splats on the ground, much to Cassandra's disgust and Iron Bull's enjoyment.  The Orb falls beside it.

“You can  _ **get off**_  me now,” Cassandra says to Bull.

Max takes one excited step towards Corypheus' half-corpse, but then backs away when he decides it's too gross to loot.  “Never mind,” he says to no one.

“Inquisitor!” Cullen exclaims.  “Thank the  _Maker_  you're alive!”

Scout Harding sprints out of the hesitant but rising celebration.  Orlesian soldiers are climbing on the dragon's back and dancing atop it.  The Wardens and Bull's Chargers are breaking open the casks.

“The Darkspawn have begun to retreat!” Harding announces.

“I'm fine,” Max says to Vivienne and Mother Giselle, who are fussing over him.  “Just a little—  Just a little winded.  And I think my tibia might be broken.”  He points his chin at the dead dragon.  “Nice job.”  And then he looks up and silently thanks Morrigan as well.  He has a funny feeling he won't be seeing her again.

Josephine clambers down the stairs.  “I need a healer!” she shouts—though she doesn't look wounded.  “Vivienne!  —Inquisitor, I need you in the gardens!  It's Dorian!”

“What?” Max asks.  The mention of Dorian draws his attention back to the Orb, … which is gone.  It was right there on the ground by the mess that was Corypheus and now he can't see it.  He quickly scans the crowd for any foolish soldier who might have picked it up, unaware of its danger, but he sees nothing.

He sprints to the gardens.

“Dorian?” Max asks when he sees him lying under the Prophet's Laurel.  Shattered bits of amulet rest beside him, shining in the sunlight coming in through the foliage.

Max kneels down to him, leans into him.  Dorian’s eyes are darting around randomly.  He's unresponsive.

“ _ **DORIAN!!**_ ”

–

_2 Weeks Later_

_Most Holy Burial Grounds at Val Royeaux_

Leliana watches the funeral service from behind a veil.  She doesn't cry, even as the gem-encrusted casket descends into the ground.  Every tear she had left was shed the day the Divine died, and that day was long ago.  But at least Orlais is now united enough to pay Justinia the proper respects.  Leliana smiles shortly at the newly appointed  _Inquisitor_  Cassandra, who stands beside her.  They exit the service early.

On the other side of town, some of Leliana's guests have gathered outside the  _Masque_  café _._ “7/10,” Sera says when another woman walks past the tables.  “Little too low for me.  I like them perky, yeah?  —Ew, gross, are those even real?”

“If you don't ask you'll never know,” Bull says, taking a bite out of a meaty ram leg.  “And that's why it's a 10/10.”

Krem leaves the table in disgust.  
  
     “ _What?_ ” Bull asks.

Leliana walks past the tables, past Sera and Bull.  Just as Sera is about to say something, Leliana cuts her off with, “ **Don't.** ”

Leliana continues down the boulevard, to Val Royeaux's docks.  Two silhouettes stand by the rails overlooking the Waking Sea.

“Thank you for coming, Inquis— _Maxwell_ ,” she corrects.

Maxwell and Dorian turn around to face her.  Max's eyes light up when he sees her.  He and Leliana hug.  Dorian leans back with a wry grin.

“Should I be on my  _knees_ , Divine Victoria?” Dorian asks.

“Don't call me that,” Leliana says.  “Well, not yet.”  She clutches her own fingers.  “So much has happened.  I can scarce believe all that has transpired.  —And all because of  _you_ , Maxwell.”

“Woah,  _woah!_ ” Max says.  “Don't lay this all on me.  That giant dragon that bit Corypheus' head off had something to do with it too.”

“Any word on that vile sorceress, by the way?” Dorian asks.

“No,” Leliana says.  “Morrigan has disappeared, as have Solas and the Orb.  It is unlikely that these events are unconnected.  —And I'm afraid I will be unable to delve further.  A Divine who employs  _spies?_   What a scandal!  If I am truly to ascend, then I must part ways with my networks... even if it feels like I am cutting away a part of me.”

“Maxwell,” Leliana says with a different tone.  “May I speak with you?  Alone?”

“Sure.  Dorian, piss off.”

“Ours is a dysfunctional relationship,” Dorian says with a dramatic sigh.  He wanders back into town.

“It seems he's made a full recovery,” Leliana says once Dorian is out of earshot.

Max leans on the rails and stares out at the ships crossing the sea.  They're much more beautiful and graceful than the Free Marches' hulking vessels.  “Yeah.  Scared the shit out of me, though.  I thought he was going to die.”

A flock of squawking seagulls briefly interrupt their conversation.

Max continues: “They said it was magical exhaustion.”  He shrugs.  “But that's not what you wanted to talk about.”

“No, it's not.”  Leliana grips the rails right beside him.  “The funeral was not the only reason I invited you.  I wanted to ask you something important.  I wanted to ask you to become my Right Hand.”

Max makes shocked eye contact with her.  Then he looks away.  Then he laughs hysterically.

“ _ **No,**_ ” he says sternly.

“Shit,” she says.  But she smiles.  “I am not surprised.  You've done enough for Thedas, I think.  —You cannot blame me for asking, yes?”

“The Orb's still out there.  And  _Morrigan's_  still out there,” Max says.  He looks down at his dim but still very present Anchor.  “I don't know which is more concerning.  And I'm worried about Solas.  I wish he had just  _talked_  to me before he left.  —And I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something really important.  Does that sound crazy?”

“No,” Leliana replies.  “It sounds like your adventure is just beginning.  Thank you for everything.  Inquisitor.”

–

“I knew you would come.”  Flemeth turns to him and says, “You should not have given your Orb to Corypheus, Dread Wolf.”

“I was too weak to unlock it after my slumber.  The failure was mine.  I should pay the price.  But the people—they need me.  I am so sorry.”

“I am sorry as well... old friend.”

The Orb erupts in Solas' hand.  It draws the life out of Flemeth, causing her to collapse in Solas' arms.  He guides her to the floor and then looks up at the Eluvian.  Power, imprisoned for thousands of years, pours out of the Eluvian and into the Orb—and then into  **Him**.

Solas stands up.  He drops the blackened, drained Orb to the ground, where it fragments.

His eyes—a wolf's eyes—blaze blue.

_This tale is dedicated to the Maker, with whom life would be rather trite_

 


End file.
